Fear and Loathing In Charm City
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: In the aftermath of the movie, Bayliss and Pembleton struggle with consequences of their talk on the roof.


**"Fear and Loathing In Charm City"**

**Summary: **In the aftermath of the movie, Bayliss and Pembleton struggle with consequences of their talk on the roof.  
**Rating: **PG  
**Spoilers: **various episodes, "Homicide: Life Everlasting". There's also a quote from "Blood Wedding" - bonus points to people who recognize it.  
**Disclaimer: **"Homicide: Life on the Street" does not belong to me. It belongs to NBC Productions and Baltimore Pictures. (What makes you think I own it?) Do not sue, because I'm a college student who has no money, so all you'll get is dirty laundry and research papers.  
A/N: This one was written when I was 16 or so (and I am almost 21 now...) so it might contain creative grammar and overt melodrama. It's the third time I'm reposting it on ff.net, because I needed to change some things and fix the beforementioned creative grammar. I hope it's not too terrible...

**"I'm saying you got a darkness, you, Tim Bayliss, you got a darkness inside of you." - Frank Pembleton **

The roof of the red brick building that houses Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit, not so far away from the waterfront, can be cold. This particular night is the coldest night of the whole winter. Frank Pembleton stands near the chain link net, looking down. He watches the cars go by, their speed intoxicating him, drawing him into the familiar beat of the city. He realizes that he missed Baltimore, missed it as a cop. Once you are back, you are a part of the city. You think the right thoughts and do the wrong things. 

For the first time in his life, Frank doesn't know what to do. Every time in the past, he has been able to make a decision. After he was partnered with Tim Bayliss, he made a decision. After his stroke, he made a decision. After Tim Bayliss wound up in ICU on a ventilator, he made a decision. The last decision he made was to come back to Homicide. It was a good decision. They caught Gee's killer. Gee's attacker, as he was known as only an hour ago. 

An hour ago, Gee was still alive. Frank was feeling slightly proud of himself. Tim wasn't behaving strangely. Tim hadn't told Frank that he killed a man in cold blood. Tim was not a confessed killer. He had not told Frank that he would kill himself unless Frank brought him in. An hour ago, life was so much simpler. Frank wanted to go to a restaurant at the waterfront, maybe invite Tim along and drink a forbidden glass of wine for frankentim and Gee. 

Frank knows that his hands are going to hurt later from the icy wind, but he has to stay up here a while longer. No time to go to the car to get gloves. Gloves are not important. His hands can hurt all they want. He should be thinking about Bayliss, but his mind can't conjure the idea of him as a killer. Frank remembers that a long time ago Gee asked him a hypothetical question: what if Tim had shot a man in the way Kellerman shot Mahoney? Frank said it wouldn't be Bayliss. 

But it is Bayliss, the sensitive detective. Frank feels like someone hit him in the face. He is suddenly furious at Mike Kellerman. Mikey shot Mahoney without an immediate intent and he got away without much remorse or distress. But Bayliss, who wouldn't have killed a bug without a reason, is going crazy over the murdering bastard he killed in some fit of insanity. Where is law when you need it? Where is justice? Why did Bayliss do what he did? Why did George Bayliss take a small child's innocence and throw it into the gutter? Why did Luke Ryland, the good ol' Maryland boy without any childhood traumas go out and kill two women? Those are questions no one can answer. Bayliss was usually the one who needed an answer. This time it is Frank Pembleton, the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am detective, who needs one. 

Frank is mad at Tim, he wants to slap him and yell at him, to remind him what he has done. He is mad at himself. He shouldn't have let himself become close to Tim. Before Tim, he was just fine. He could have lived just as well without him, but somehow he feels that it was worth it. It was worth to hear Mrs. Bayliss say that Tim considered him to be a friend. No one had ever considered Frank Pembleton a friend. In the course of his life, Frank was considered a partner, a husband, a son, a pain in the ass, a patient, a possible shift commander, but never a friend. 

Frank thought he knew Tim. He used to laugh at Tim's strange ideas. He thought Tim was too sensitive. _Pembleton, bring him in, he committed murder! _the homicide cop part of his consciousness says. _Pembleton, you idiot, he's suicidal, call an ambulance, get him to a psychiatrist! Do something!_ an unfamiliar part of his mind yells, fighting the homicide cop. _Frank, it's all because of you. You left him here without a partner. It is your fault._

Frank looks at his watch again. He left Tim in one of the rooms that replaced the Box. He took Tim's gun and locked the door. After that, he went back to the roof. It has been fifteen minutes. The look on Tim's face when he told him that he couldn't absolve him has cut into Frank's soul deeper then he will ever admit. Frank looks at the sky, asking God why it happened. But God is silent. He doesn't care about murders in Baltimore. He's got bigger things to worry about. _No, it's his fault_, the homicide cop says. _He killed the man. You didn't make him do it. Didn't put the gun in his hands._ The other voice replies, and Frank feels a chill deep inside himself. Suddenly he is very cold, so cold his teeth start to chatter. _It was you who left him. You never cared about what he wanted. You're selfish, Frank Pembleton. You...are...beyond...stupid._

* * * 

Tim Bayliss is sitting at the table in the interview room. His coat is lying on the chair opposite him. In front of him is a Styrofoam cup. It is empty. Tim is feeling sick. He is waiting for Frank to come down from the roof. His thoughts are in disorder. Frank didn't forgive him. Is it all over? He still has his belt and shoelaces, he thinks with a smile. Frank hasn't watched a lot of TV in his life, obviously. Tim has been watching TV a lot ever since he was little. He could forget about himself. He didn't need to think of all the bad things. No one could hurt him when he watched TV. Frank would have laughed if he knew that Tim's boyhood hero was Jim Reed from "ADAM-12". Reed was good-looking, married; a good cop. Tim is single, not good-looking by his own standards, and a cop who killed someone in cold blood. 

Tim imagines Jim Reed looking sternly at him, shaking his finger. Somehow, this thought strikes him as extremely funny. He starts laughing, and continues to laugh until there are tears in his eyes. He laughs until the tears run down his face, until he can feel their salty taste on his lips. Jim Reed would be disappointed with me, he thinks, reaching for the box of Kleenex, abandoned by someone in the Box. He wipes the tears from his eyes, and carefully puts the crumpled tissue on the table. He looks at his hands. They are regular hands, with a few small scars, short nails and an ink spot on the left thumb. They are the hands that held a gun and pointed it at Ryland. 

He wishes that the fateful bullet should have killed him that cold May night in 1998, should have gone through his heart. After waking up, his whole life was different - Frank was gone, and with him, a large piece of the past. For a while, he didn't want to live. He realized that he had been dependent on Frank, maybe a little more than he could admit. His life started its downward spiral. He was not used to being alone. After he returned to work, nothing was ever the same. He finally understood to what extent Frank was involved in his life. People now were not afraid to openly go up against him. The only thing Tim wanted every day was to go home and disappear in the maze of TV, sleep and soul-searching. His life, so carefully coordinated, was crumpling. Tim spent too much time thinking about his life, and came to the conclusion that he was unable to do anything about it. And then came the Ryland case, causing additional pain and embarrassment to his already fragile self, and he felt like he was walking on a tightrope every day, knowing that one day it would snap. 

One day, it finally did, because the other part of Tim Bayliss, the one Frank long suspected to exist, the one that wanted to kill Uncle George and the araber, and every bastard who had gotten away with blood on his hands grabbed his service revolver and made Ryland say he was sorry for all he did. He made him beg, made him apologize for all deaths. He made him stand on his knees in the garbage, begging for his life. Then he shot him, and walked away. He found himself in his apartment, shivering and feverish, watching QVC. He knew what he had done, but felt that it wasn't him who did it. Sometimes, the violent Tim Bayliss took over, and the calm Tim just watched himself from the side, wondering what happened to him. Each disappointing in his life fueled his violent persona. It was he, the other Tim who robbed the store for eleven cents, who smashed the mirror window in the Box, who hit Danvers and walked away. There is a possibility that Danvers will be his prosecutor. _"Yes, Detective Bayliss shoved me over a railing the day he killed Luke Ryland. He's very credible." _

* * * 

Frank is looking down at the street. His mind is still not made up. The headlights mix, become colorful patterns of light on the night street, as the city sleeps. This night it is quiet. There are no murders, no suicides, no death. The city cries in its sleep, for the innocent and the guilty, for everyone who ever died in the city of Baltimore. It cries for those who will die tomorrow, for those who died before. But today is an exception to the rule. One of Baltimore City's finest is dead. His passing has scared death into hiding. 

Frank always wanted to be a homicide cop. His aunt, a nurse at the emergency room in one of New York's largest hospitals, once told him that Homicide detectives were the equivalents of ER doctors in law enforcement. They had to know a little of everything, and still use it for one goal: for the ER doctors it is fixing up the patient, for the homicide detectives - finding the killer. A homicide cop is an Arson cop when a person dies in a suspicious fire. He is an Auto Theft cop when a dead body is found in a trunk of a stolen car. He is a psychologist when he needs to get into someone's mind. He is the relative for hire, the hated and the loved. He gets handed the case no one else wants to take on. Frank was a very good Homicide cop. But today he saw something that terrified him. Tim Bayliss, his partner for six years and a friend, was dead inside. He walked, talked, told him what he did, but Tim Bayliss was dead. There was nothing in his eyes except a void. Frank Pembleton has seen many dead bodies in his life, but he never saw a dead body that lived. He never expected it to be someone close to him. 

* * * 

Tim stares into the mirror window, his eyes emptied of life. He knows that he killed himself when he killed Ryland. He shot himself as well, taking two lives. One life was not worth taking. But which one was it? Why didn't he just shoot himself and leave for someone else to avenge Ryland? He will never know. No one will ever know. There's no sense for him to be alive. If he stays alive, he will be just a nuisance for the legal system, a martyr for the tabloids, everyone's Holy Grail. He'll cease to be a human being and turn into words on a piece of paper, accusatory or senseless. Tonight he will lose his identity and become nothing, but only if Frank decides so. Tim never thought that he would put his life into Frank's hands. But Frank Pembleton is still the person with whom Tim Bayliss had the longest relationship in his adult life. He told Renée Sheppard that he loved Frank the day he shot Ryland: he didn't lie. What has his life been other than a succession of failed friendships and relationships, and years of constant anxiety and self-pitying? 

He takes out his brown well-worn leather wallet, emptying it on the table. A photo of Adena Watson, her angelic forever eleven-year-old face looking at the world with a disarming smile. Olivia Pembleton, pulling at his hair while Mary Pembleton is laughing. The Pembleton family at an outing, with Frank playing the role of a proud father. That sums up Tim's life in the last couple of years. Adena and Pembletons. Adena and Frank. The two most important people in Tim's life. One is alive and one has been dead for seven years. Each one means a lot to him; both want him to be with them. Who will be stronger, Adena Watson or Frank Pembleton? We'll wait and see, Tim says to himself. We'll wait and see. 

* * * 

Frank is sitting behind the wheel of his car, surrounded by the city that he will never return to. The old Baltimore has said goodbye to Frank Pembleton. He has made a decision. He will never know if it was the right one. He looks out of the window, seeing only his own reflection in the glass. 

Tim Bayliss will now be a good memory, a familiar face on old photographs, a friend he didn't acknowledge, and understood too late. Baltimore will be just a city on a map, a small black round dot just northeast of Washington, DC. He will continue to live there, but the city will be different. Homicide will be a word, a strong word but a word nonetheless. Tonight is the end of Baltimore as it was. The city is a snake, and from time to time it sheds its skin. 

**"Give me Homicide or give me death." - Tim Bayliss**

_The End_


End file.
